Farmers are suffering from many ill-effects of climate change - Yorkshire Post Letters

These pages suffer sadly from the repeated contributions of a coterie of climate confusers. The latest examples (The YP, December 20) come from Messrs Auty, Cross and Wardrop, all of whom have previously had their misrepresentations corrected by myself and many others, yet they persist in parading their poor understanding of climate science.

Indeed, as a regular contributor to these pages, Peter Auty must shoulder responsibility himself when he writes "Is there any wonder that confusion reigns about climate change?"

He repeats again the irrelevance that "all living things exude CO2" - yes, but very many absorb more than they emit. It is widely understood that current problematic global warming results from the excess of CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels, not from the natural carbon cycle which routinely exchanges the gas between plants, animals and the atmosphere.

The contribution of water vapour is highly variable but also discounted as a routine natural effect. Increasing methane is relevant, but despite the gas being 30 times more powerful than CO2, it has less than one 200th the concentration in the atmosphere, so CO2 remains more significant by far.

Charles Wardrop states the earth's climate is beyond human influence, being driven by the sun and affected only by natural variabilities. The ‘World Climate Declaration’, source of his own ‘received opinions’ that he derides in others, has been thoroughly discredited. Its signatories were mostly not experts in climate science, some with connections to the fossil fuel industry.

Again, let us all recognise that the ongoing natural influence of the sun - well understood both by cosmic science and climate science - is responsible for the baseline position that makes our planet habitable at all.

The pre-industrial atmospheric concentration of CO2 plays a significant role in the baseline, but its unprecedentedly rapid increase by over 50 per cent since the industrial revolution is the substantive cause of the present rate of climate disturbance, which is beyond anything that can be attributed to solar variation.

Alongside Mr Auty, Clark Cross also mentions increased global population, which is relevant, but only because, under our long-standing economic system, that results in more industry, more development, etc, which then leads to greater emission of CO2.

It is not the population growth per se that is the problem, but rather that the majority poorer peoples seek quite reasonably to increase their living standard to that of the so-called developed world, which runs on established technologies at a much higher rate than the planet could sustain for all. That's why we all need to adjust our ways.

Mr Auty complains that Dr Blewett quotes the experience of one woman out of a billion or more Chinese, but her individuality does not make her view irrelevant. Any random view based on real lived experience will always be valid. Mr Auty himself is one out of many millions in the UK, so does he agree his own view is similarly irrelevant?

However, our farmers seriously are suffering many ill effects of climate change - all things they may be used to dealing with, but not so severely historically as of late, nor so often. All the more reason to engage properly with the causes, and act urgently to counter them and prevent worsening.